PersonalFinance #Banking #FinancialLiteracy
Hey there! 👋 Where did you learn about Personal finance, banking etc? 🤔
I’m in the same boat as you – 25 years old and clueless about finances. But hey, we’re in this together! Here are a few tips to get started:
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Online Resources: Websites like Investopedia and The Balance offer great articles and guides on personal finance and banking.
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Books: Consider reading personal finance classics like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki or "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey.
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Workshops/Seminars: Attend financial literacy workshops or seminars in your community or online.
- Meet with a Financial Advisor: Schedule a meeting with a financial advisor to discuss your goals and get personalized advice.
Let’s dive into the world of banking and personal finance together! 🌟💰 Have more tips to share? Drop them below!
!StepsTrigger
!InvestingTrigger
You can learn the very basics by looking up finance bloggers on YT. It will give you a basic foundation to start. After that try to read personal finance books if possible and start iof by investing small sums of money in the market. I’ve been in the markets for 2 decades now – the knowledge and patience you develop by playing in the market will
Be your best teacher.
You can do better than 2%. Shop around.
Some youtubers I watch are Steph and Den for personal finance and Ben Felix for Investing Advice.
2% Interest on TFSA isn’t really worth it if you are investing for the long term since can get 7% annual returns on holding low cost index funds. Some good ones are XEQT – Global Market and VFV – U.S. Market and you can buy them on Wealthsimple with no commission fees.
Ben Felix Explains it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdzOlRRHOU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdzOlRRHOU8)
Also, if you don’t already have one start building an emergency fund which is money in HISA that covers 3 – 6 months worth of expenses that can be pulled out as cash.
I never did
Not to age myself, but personal finance blogs. Now it’s seems that blogging has shifted to YouTube but the idea is still the same.
Don’t listen to the advice of what stocks to buy, but it’s good for little things like which retirement accounts to prioritize, savings rates, allocation, etc.
Reading all the repetitive questions here at PFC
https://www.mcgillpersonalfinance.com
Parents, Grade 9 Business Principles, and by reading The Wealthy Barber. I would think only one of those would be useful to you today though! But I don’t know if Barber has been updated to keep up with the times (TFSA and all that).
You’re 25, so good on you for thinking about this at a relatively early age.
In the finance world you’re going to get a lot of different opinions, but I’ll try to stick to the generally accepted basic ideas here:
Have an emergency fund in a high interest savings account. Build up around 3-6 months worth of living expenses.
Having a TFSA is great. It’s unclear from your post if you’re aware of this, but a TFSA is an investment account, not a savings account. You can use a robo advisor to select stocks/bonds etc if you’re not sure what to pick. The market fluctuates, but certainly over time you’re going to earn far more than 2.5 percent. The market typically returns about 7-8 percent a year on average.
The great advantage you have as a young person is time. The more years you have to invest, the more your money is going to grow with compound interest without you having to do anything. Invest as much as your living expenses will allow. Your future self will thank you later.
You’ll hear the phrase “diversify” a lot. This means you don’t want to invest all your money in one thing. If you put all your money in, say, the stock of a coffee company, and that company starts getting bad press or goes out of business, you’re screwed. You want to invest in a lot of different things so that you are generally trending upwards overall.
And yeah ‘Steph and Den’ Youtube videos all the way. They’re great and you’ll learn a lot. They make it easy to understand and are around your age.
BOOKS
When a friend told me I can put my money into rrsp and withdraw a month later to get an even bigger down payment.
That was me at 26 not knowing shit about anything finance related and ready to buy a house with $70,000 sitting in a savings account at < 1%.
Immigrant parents don’t know anything about Canadian financial system. High school never taught us one thing about it. Never started to get into it until that friend explained the rrsp basics to me. Then started branching out and doing a bit more research online on my own.
Reading The Wealthy Barber Returns and Millionaire Teacher was a good start for me, then reading lots on here and doing online research for specific questions I had.
When I work in the bank.
Mostly by fumbling along the way. My nana did teach me some, like opening an RRSP as soon as I was old enough. Gail Vaz-Oxlade also made a huge impact on me with her show Til Debt Do Us Part.
But I really didn’t truly learn and understand until I found PFC sub. Just keep reading here. Follow the money steps.
For me I read “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” by Rami Sethi. The title is clickbaity but I find it a useful read for someone starting from zero. Read this before any other finance investing books.
For blogs I think a lot of people read Canadian Couch Potatoe?
My mom, she’s a financial planner for a big bank, taught me everything at 12 and it changed my life, shoutout to you mom!
The wealthy barber.
JL Collins – Simple path to wealth and Mr. Money Moustache’s blog
My father I remember being around eight . This is when you bought stocks you actually got stock certificates. He’s put them on the kitchen table & explain that this piece of paper represented example 50 shares/ stocks and it was worth around $50k. He’d then say he gets xxx amount in dividends from this company. The most important thing he taught me Start early , invest consistently. One day you’ll get sick of the bullshit and you’ll be able to say “ fuck it “ Fast forward. He’s 90. His CPP OAS is his “ fun money “ He still invests . Start early , invest consistently
4 years of business school, a CPA.CA and a CFP.
Most of the stuff you read on the internet is heavily biased. There are some good business books and some good free online resources provided by Canadian universities.
McGill offered a free video series a couple of years ago, it might still be available. It was very good at teaching the basics.
Otherwise , look at publications that are sponsored by the CRA or the Government of Canada, as those resources tend to skip through the sales pitch.
Wealthy Barber. An old box gave me a copy when I was 22. Started saving 10-15% of my gross automatically. 55 now with a 2m RSP. Dont get me wrong – I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes and wasted money. But the savings backstop provided a soft landing
The “jumping off point” was from my friends. They told me about Canadian Couch Potato and the TD e-Series indexes. I knew about and had a TFSA and RRSP, but like a lot of people I didn’t know anything about investing and just treated them like regular savings accounts. Once I read about investing in the index funds it all sort of clicked. Like I understood the concept of interest, but now it was just much more “realized”.
I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert in anything financially-related, but I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp on all the major points. At the very least, I know where to look to fill in any gaps.
The Wealthy Barber. A bit dated but still good info.
My parents.
Til Debt do Us Part TV show
School
Reading Articles/blogs
Udemy has loads of finance courses, that’s where I learned the majority. You can’t trust anything in these subs because there is no way to verify who is wealthy and who is poor af but loves to plaster their opinion everywhere they can.
So be careful here. Or in any sub related to your money.
Trial and error. Mostly error.
Public high school courses, university courses, podcasts, youtube, friends, family.
Also, for what it’s worth, you can’t invest in a TFSA in the bank and get 2%. TFSAs are just a basket to hold financial securities in. You should figure out what you’ve invested in, and how it’s giving you 2% (which is terribly low, by the way).
When I started to have endless problems with employment. I read a book called Multiple Streams of Income by Robert Allen.
Ya it would be real nice if the school system actually taught life skills instead of all the new bs
The Wealthy Barber.
It really first started when I was 8.
I was staying at my grandmother’s house and she said we have to go out given that I was too young to stay home by myself. This is an old town in South Korea btw in 1990s.
She walked about 15 minutes and knocked on this door and she would collect like 50 dollars or 100 dollars.. and she would do that for the next few homes. I was blown away how people just give her free money. During that time I was given like $1 in front of my family members if I danced or sth btw. So it was a lot of money in my eyes. This is the first time I learned about “rent”.
Then I made my first bank account at the age of 10. At that time South Korea was in financial trouble and the saving interest rate was at 20%. I remember collecting 10 dollars for 50 dollars I put the money in the bank for 1 year.. this is when I learned about “interest” and “currency”.
I was in love with this hot girl in college who never did her homework nor studied. She was taking economics. Just to be with her, I attended her economics courses which helped me to learn about basic micro and macroeconomics.
Then one day during summer break of my college years, I asked my mom,=who doesn’t like to talk or brag about money, how my father and her have so much money. She gave me one advice and that was to own things and not borrow whether they are stocks or the real estate or business. Own things and do not work for others.
I now own a business that generates 500k net income after tax. I own three properties in Vancouver rented. I collect about $150,000 rent alone per year. And I go in and out based on the macroeconomic environment.
And I drive this crappy $10,000 2011 Bmw 128i because I don’t like owning things that depreciate. But I own it at least and am writing this post in this car because I had a huge fight with my gf and don’t want to go to my condo until she leaves for work.
I guess I could finance Porche or even Ferrari if I wanted to and write it off.. but I have to own things… I dont borrow.
With a library card, you have access to free audiobooks. There are lots of Podcasts cover this subject too.
Start listening